Test by pressing firmly, protecting the fingers by a soft cloth; or insert a fork. When the potato is done, it yields to the pressure of the fingers. If the potatoes cannot be served at once, break the skin that the steam may escape, cover with a cloth, and keep them hot.
For convenience at the table, cut the potatoes in two lengthwise, loosen the content of each half with a fork, sprinkle with salt, and add a bit of b.u.t.ter, as much as one would add at the table.
_Potato on the half sh.e.l.l_ carries serving one step farther. Cut the baked potatoes in two lengthwise, remove the contents, mash lightly, add b.u.t.ter or b.u.t.terine, milk, and salt, allowing a teaspoonful of b.u.t.ter, a tablespoonful of milk and a shake or two of salt to each potato. These measurements cannot be given with exactness, because potatoes vary in size. Beat this mixture well, replace lightly in each half sh.e.l.l, and brown the tops slightly.
This is nothing more than mashed baked potato, prettily served.
Invent other variations of this dish, adding ingredients that are agreeable when mixed with the potato. The beaten white of an egg added, gives greater lightness to the mixture in the potato sh.e.l.l.
_Method 2._ The same as Method 1, except that the potatoes are pared before baking. A good method when the skins are not fair. A brown crust is formed on the potato, which is crisp and pleasant to eat. Large potatoes may be cut in two before baking, or even sliced.
What difference in length of baking will there be between Methods 1 and 2?
=2. Boiled potatoes.=
The only way to prevent the loss of nutrients in using this process is to boil the potatoes with the "jackets" on. This is the best way with new potatoes. This method with ripe and old potatoes gives a yellowish color to the surface and indeed throughout. It is a labor-saving method for the busy housewife, as the skin cracks and loosens at the end of the boiling process, and is easily removed.
If you choose to have a snow-white potato, it must be pared before boiling, and thus you deliberately waste the valuable mineral matter provided by nature. If your income permits this aesthetic pleasure, the mineral matter can of course be supplied in other vegetables. The woman who can spend but twenty to thirty cents per capita for food per day should boil the potatoes with the skins on and gratify her artistic sense in some other way.
The method of boiling is the same in either case, whether the potato is pared or not.
Have enough boiling water to cover the potatoes. Put the potatoes of uniform size one at a time into the kettle that the boiling may not stop. Allow a gentle boiling to continue until the potatoes are done. Why avoid rapid boiling? Test with a fork at the end of half an hour. When the potatoes are mellow, drain off the water, and set the kettle where the remaining moisture will steam off.
Shake gently to hasten this process, and sprinkle the potatoes with salt. If they must stand before serving will you place a tin cover or a cloth over the kettle? Old potatoes, with a strong flavor, should be pared before boiling, or even soaked in cold water.
=3. Mashed potatoes.=--Some one devised this convenient method of serving, to save trouble at the table. Mashed potato can be very poor and unappetizing when wet and lumpy. Do not attempt it with new, poor, or old potatoes. See that the boiled potatoes are as dry as can be--every particle of water steamed away. Mash thoroughly with the wire masher, add b.u.t.ter or b.u.t.terine, salt and milk in about the proportions given for potato in the half sh.e.l.l. Use a tablespoonful or so of cream if it is available. _Beat vigorously._ The mealiness of the potato and the vigorous beating are the secrets of success.
The finished product should be light and somewhat moist,--_not wet_.
Reheat in the kettle. Pile lightly in a hot dish and serve; or brown the top before serving.
_Potato puff._ (Souffle.)--With your knowledge of mashed potato, can you not invent a potato puff?
=4. Escalloped potato.=--The name _escalloped_ is applied to any baked dish that is arranged in layers. Escalloped potato is a palatable dish and this is one of the most economical of methods.
Wash, pare, and slice the potatoes in 1/4-inch pieces. Slightly grease an earthen or enameled baking dish. Cover the bottom of the dish with a layer of the slices, sprinkle the slices lightly with flour, and put on two teaspoonfuls of b.u.t.ter, or b.u.t.terine, in small bits. Continue until the dish is nearly full. Pour in milk to barely cover the potatoes, put a cover on the dish and set the dish in an oven of 380 F. Remove the cover in time to allow the top to brown. Allow rather more than half an hour for the baking.
=5. Creamed potatoes.=--_Method 1_, an _easy way_. Chop cold _baked_ potatoes with the chopper. Allow one tablespoonful of b.u.t.ter to 1 pint of chopped potato. Melt the b.u.t.ter in a saucepan. Stir in the potatoes. Shake from the dredger the equivalent of a tablespoonful of flour, stirring the potato with one hand as you shake with the other.
Pour in enough milk to barely cover the chopped potato. Set the saucepan in the coolest spot on the range; _or_ on the simmering burner of a gas range, upon an asbestos mat; _or_ turn all into an earthenware jar, or baking dish, and proceed as with escalloped potato. Allow the mixture to cook until it becomes creamy.
_Method 2_. Cut the cold potatoes in cubes, and heat in a thin white sauce. See Chapter X.
Boiled potatoes may be used, but baked are better in texture and flavor for creaming.
=6. French fried potatoes.=--Wash and pare small potatoes, cut in eighths lengthwise, and soak a few minutes in cold water. Take from water, dry between towels, and fry in deep fat. Drain on brown paper and sprinkle with salt.
(1) _Deep fat frying._--An iron kettle is the best for deep fat, 3 quarts a convenient size. A wire basket is almost necessary for frying soft material.
Fill the kettle 1/2 full of fat and place over fire. When a slight blue smoke or vapor rises from it, it is ready to test. Test with small cubes of bread. If bread browns in 1 minute, the temperature is right for uncooked mixtures. If it browns in 10 seconds, it is right for cooked materials. Care must be taken to keep the temperatures at the right point, for if too cool, the material will soak fat; if too hot, both fat and material to be cooked will burn.
(2) _To clarify fat._--Drop several slices raw, pared potato into the fat and let bubble up. Strain all through cheesecloth back into pail from which fat was taken. The potatoes seem to absorb food odors and collect crumbs and leave the fat clear.
=7. Stewed celery.=--A green vegetable. Stalks of celery, too tough or coa.r.s.e for serving uncooked, are delicious when stewed. The process is simple. Wash, sc.r.a.pe, and cut the stalks crosswise. Place them in a stewpan, barely cover with hot water, adding a teaspoonful of salt to a pint of celery. Cook gently for half an hour or until the celery is tender. Use the liquid remaining in making a sauce, adding some milk to make the necessary amount of liquid. Three fourths of a cup of sauce is enough for a pint of celery. See Chapter X.
=8. Cabbage.=--The method given makes cabbage a delicious and attractive vegetable, as delicate as cauliflower, and the odor in the kitchen is not noticeable.
Select a small cabbage, with the ribs in the leaves not too thick. Prepare the cabbage before washing it by cutting out the stalks from below with a sharp knife. Separate the leaves. Have ready the largest kettle available, nearly full of rapidly boiling water. Drop in one cabbage leaf at a time, pressing each one down with a long-handled spoon or skimmer. Do this so slowly that the water does not stop boiling. Leave the kettle uncovered, and allow the cabbage to cook from 12 to 15 minutes, depending on the thickness of the leaf stalks. Remove the leaves with a long-handled skimmer, putting them into a colander standing on a plate. _Immediately_ pour the hot water down the sink drain, turn on the cold water to flush away the odor, and fill the kettle with cold water. While the cabbage is cooking, you have made a pint of white sauce, No. 2 (Ch. X), adding a teaspoonful of salt, and have prepared 1/2 cup of b.u.t.tered crumbs. Cut the cabbage leaves slightly, place them in a baking dish, pour the white sauce over them, sprinkle the crumbs on the top, and brown the crumbs in the oven or under the gas. If you can, prepare this as a surprise at home, and ask the family to "guess" what it is. If the cabbage is a good one, some of the leaves turn a very pretty green with this method of boiling.
=9. Baked beans.=--A nitrogenous vegetable and a meat subst.i.tute. A dish known in old days in New England, baked to perfection in the old brick oven. Baked beans seem difficult of digestion for some people.
The mustard is supposed to be helpful, and adds something to the flavor. If the mola.s.ses is omitted, or but a small amount used, and if b.u.t.ter takes the place of pork or suet, the beans seem more digestible. In different parts of New England the dish is varied.
Some people prefer rather dry baked beans, others wish them moist and very sweet.
_Utensils._--A kettle. A covered bean pot.
_Ingredients._--
1 quart of white beans.
1 teaspoonful of soda.
1/4 lb. salt pork or more, _or_
4 tablespoonfuls of beef fat or b.u.t.ter subst.i.tute.
Mola.s.ses, from two tablespoonfuls to 1/2 cup, _or none._
1 teaspoonful of mustard.
_Method._--Wash, and soak the beans in cold water over night.
Pour off any water that remains. Put the beans into the kettle, cover with cold water, add the soda, and cook gently until the beans are slightly softened. The soda aids the softening. Pour off the water again, and put the beans into the pot. Mix the mola.s.ses and mustard with a pint of water, and pour this over the beans, adding more water if the beans are not covered. Place the pork or other fat upon the beans, and cover the pot. If fat other than pork is used, salt must be added to the beans. The beans should bake slowly, for from 6 to 8 hours, and even longer in a very slow oven. A stove of the type shown in Fig. 17 is good for this purpose. They can be baked in the ordinary gas oven, if only one burner is used, and that is turned very low.
_Laboratory management._--The last experiment is the only one not easily performed in the school kitchen. The process, can begin perhaps on one day, and be finished the next. If there is some apparatus that cooks at a low temperature, the practical difficulties may be overcome.
=Vegetable, or "cream" soups.=
These are of two cla.s.ses: the purees (porridge), or thick soups, with vegetable pulp as the thickening material, and the cream soups, which are somewhat thinner, the juices of some vegetable giving the flavor.
Potato puree, or soup, is an example of the first; cream of tomato of the second. The line is not sharply drawn between the two in many cook books.
Milk is an important ingredient in these soups, so that they are sometimes known as milk soups. b.u.t.ter and flour are used in both,--the flour in the puree "binds" the mixture and makes it smoother; in the cream soup the flour is used for thickening as well.
Dried beans, peas, or lentils make a delicious puree, the secret of success being long slow cooking in some low temperature apparatus. They are brought to perfection in the Atkinson Cooker.
=10. Potato Puree.=
_Ingredients._
Potato 1 cup Milk 1 quart Flour 1 tablespoonful b.u.t.ter 1 tablespoonful Salt 2 teaspoonfuls Celery stalks, cut small 1 teaspoonful Onion, chopped 1 tablespoonful Pepper, Cayenne To taste.
_Remarks._--If a thicker puree is desired, use more of the mashed potato.
If celery salt is used, omit one teaspoonful of the salt. Less onion may be used, and the pepper omitted.
_Utensils._--Make the list yourself, after reading the directions for mixing.